If a person could embody Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood, queer photographer Diana Solis (she/they) just might be that individual.
In fact, their Instagram handle is @pilsenita.
However, Solis’ life spans two countries. Solis is a photographer, multidisciplinary artist and educator who is rooted in Mexican and Chicano culture. As a documentary photographer, Solís has an archive of LGBTQ+, Latinx and feminist communities and movements from Chicago to Mexico City.
Solis was born in Monterrey, Mexico, but “we moved here when I was one,” they said. “When we arrived, I was very little and we lived in Uptown. Then we moved to east Pilsen, following my dad’s cousin.” Continuing to recount her childhood, Solis mentioned that her family then moved to Bridgeport, starting kindergarten at James Ward Elementary School. However, her family maintained its ties to Mexico, going there annually to vacation.
Eventually, Solis attended Harrison High School, in Chicago’s South Lawndale neighborhood, where “I sort of became really involved in the anti-war movement,” she said. (This may have been because her parents were involved in community organization, albeit with different groups.) By this point, Solis had been interested in photography. “I had taken a class as a child through Mayor [Richard J.] Daley’s Summer Youth Program. Students from UIC would come and teach us art classes. My brother and I ended up taking photography and I stuck with it; I really enjoyed it. And I had been interested in photography since I was 11 because my dad would bring home Life magazine and National Geographic.
“My mom gifted me with a small Kodak camera when I was about 11. I was just taking pictures. I didn’t know how or anything, but I was just trying to do my best. Basically, I photographed my friends, my family, my mom in the kitchen, my brother, and my mom in the backyard.” At that point, the artistic seed was planted.
But Solis yearned to live in other cities and they ultimately decided to do so. In 1983, while in her 20s, she relocated to Mexico City to be in a new environment. “I’ve always wanted to live there. I never really wanted to live in my hometown because I didn’t like it. It was very industrial and it reminded me of Pilsen.
“One of my hopes was to travel to Mexico and South America and do documentary work. A lot of my work centered around women and women’s lives. I did get the opportunity to be in Peru, working there for a few months, and it was a very dangerous time. There was a lot of political strife. I learned a lot there from the journalists, including learning to stay alert.” Eventually, after traveling globally, Solis returned to Chicago in the late 1990s, living in Wicker Park before moving back to Pilsen.
Interestingly, at that point, Solís turned away from photography to become a painter for almost two decades. She said, “I was in a studio in Wicker Park—and this was pre-gentrified Wicker Park, with a lot of artists living there. There were also a lot of Puerto Rican people living there.
“I graduated from the University of Illinois at Chicago with a BFA in photography. But I always had a knack for drawing and I come from a family that has artistic talent—poetry, drawing and mural-making. Plus, I had a couple teachers, including Kerry James Marshall, who encouraged me to paint. So I graduated and I took myself to Europe. For four months, I traveled in Europe and I felt like I really needed to paint and to do other forms of art. I left photography for 18 years.
“But I returned to photography because of the pandemic; I blame everything on the pandemic. In 2019, a friend of mine gifted me with a Nikon digital camera. When the pandemic happened, the only way for me to express my feelings about what was happening was through photography. I jumped on YouTube, got a couple tutorials and I never put [the camera] down after that. I realized that I really needed photography.”
Solís’ work has been shown at major institutions, including The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture of the Riverside Art Museum in Chicano Camera Culture: A Photographic History, 1966–2026. Last year, her work was exhibited at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art in City in a Garden: Queer Art and Activism in Chicago
And what has kept Solis involved in photography for all these years? Is it the storytelling aspect or being able to confront/discuss issues? “I think it is all of the above, but mainly I was interested in the story part, the storytelling,” she said. “I still am. I still do documentary photography—but not as much because I’m older and I can’t run around as much. If I were 20 years younger, forget it. I’d be at every demo and everything.”
Solis’ photography skills and lengthy career have resulted in them being selected as a recipient of a 3Arts Award. Regarding the honor, she said, “I think it’s great. It’s wonderful. I think that I wish all artists could get awards all the time. The award gives me a lot of satisfaction in the sense that I’m older; I’m in my 70s.
“I think that it also gives you a place within the artistic world that people see what you’ve been doing. So it opens doors, in one way. Also, it brings you close to a community of people who have been creating artwork for a long time.”
The 3Arts Awards will take place Monday, Oct. 26, at 5:30 p.m. at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance. Purchase tickets here.
